Rule of the Dead
by drakensis
Summary: When Aragorn entered the Halls of the Dead, he wasn't the only ones looking for the dishonoured dead...
1. A Rival Claim

"Who enters my domain?" demanded the King of the Dead.

Aragorn narrowed his eyes. "One who will have your allegiance," he answered.

The skull-like face sneered. "The Dead do not suffer the living to pass," the long dead monarch retorted.

"You will suffer me."

The King stared at Aragorn and then laughed. Gimli and Legolas tensed as the hosts of the dead swept out around them... a circle of ghosts clad in the armour of a day long past, their spectral weapons still keen.

"The way is shut. It was made by those who are dead and The Dead keep it. The way is -"

The words of the foresworn king were cut off as the great gates above them shook violently. Aragorn concealed his surprise as the ghost backed up almost... nervously?

The gates shook again. This time the bar across them cracked visibly. Even Gimli had trouble imagining what engine could so easily threaten to force open such huge gates.

There was a third impact and this time the bar broke entirely. One of the gates simply swung open but the other was driven loose from the upper hinge and toppled over, the twisting effect breaking the lower hinge and leaving the massive gate as a crude ramp down from the gateway to the floor of the cavern.

Standing where the gates had been was a tall figure, clad in white and black robes, hair rising up into a series of spikes above his head. Legolas' keen eyes could see tiny bells at the tip of each spike and they chimed gently as the figure descended along the fallen gate, the flickering lights revealing him to be a man, scar-faced and with a black eye patch.

A moment later, a smaller figure darted after him. For a moment, the three members of the Fellowship wondered how a Hobbit had managed to enter the Halls of the Dead, only to realise after a moment that it was a small girl with short hair and clad in black robes. Like the man, she carried a long and slightly curved blade - so long that the scabbard through her belt would have scraped on the floor had it not been for the small wheels at the tip of the scabbard.

The unknown man smirked viciously as he glared at the Hosts of the Dead.

"Right then," Zaraki Kenpachi snarled. "So this is where you lot have been hiding..."


	2. Soul Society Blues

Unohana looked around as she walked into the Eleventh Division's barracks. Honestly, for such an outwardly manly Shinigami (the Fourth Division Captain's composed face betrayed nothing of the little fantasy running through her mind), Captain Zaraki was such a baby about medical examinations.

That, of course, was why she had to carry them out herself - past experience had demonstrated that no other member of the Fourth Division was capable of pinning the self-proclaimed strongest swordsman of the Gotei-13 down long enough to take his shirt off... as a prelude to the examination of course.

The barracks seemed unusually quiet. Usually this time of morning was a busy one for the Eleventh Division. There would almost always be dozens of hungover Shinigami drilling with their swords under the orders of Zaraki's officers. Zaraki himself would almost always be beating upon the first batch of training dummies... er, trainees of the day (Unohana was well aware of this part of his shedule, since the trainees almost invariably wound up visiting the Fourth Division's medical stations shortly afterwards).

But today there seemed to be a distinct lack of muscular sweating men around the division for Unohana to look at. In fact, there weren't even the losers of the previous night's betting sweeping up the aftermath of yesterday's carousing. For that matter, the usual debris was almost entirely absent. One might even think that the drinking and gambling had been curtailed the previous evening, which would be a shocking lapse in the routine of the Eleventh Division.

Just as Unohana was about to pause and run a quick check on herself to make sure that she wasn't displaying the symptoms of having ingested some kind of hallucinogen, she detected the sound of one of the normal activities of the Eleventh Division.

"WHEE! Faster, Horsey!" shouted the Eleventh Division's Vice Captain as her steed staggered around a corner, the infant Shinigami sitting on his broad shoulders, kicking her heels against his chest and clutching onto his whiskers with her hands.

"Not the beard!" protested the dwarf futilely, gamely following the wooden walkway towards the next rank of dojos.

"Oh! Hello, Braid-Lady," Yachiru called, bouncing up and down on Gimli's back, causing his armour to creak alarmingly.

"Good morning, Vice-Captain," Unohan replied serenely. "And how are you?"

She pouted. "It's boring."

There was a spluttering from below her.

"Ken-chan and all the others have gone out to play with the Orcses and the Oliphanteys," Yachiru explained. "But Ken-chan borrowed Horsey for me to play with and he says he'll bring me back an Oliphantey if I'm really good."


	3. Elven Concerns

The Pelennor fields were a trampled ruin as Rohirrim and Haradim swirled around each other and the vast mass of the Oliphants. The lower districts of Minas Tirith were on fire, as the Easterlings who had pushed within were fighting like rats in a trap against the Men of Gondor above them and the black robed swordsmen that Aragorn had led… well, guided… out of the Halls of the Dead.

Most of those swordsmen, having started the day by boarding the fleet of Umbar Corsair that had been approaching the battlefield from the south, were now heavily engaged in the city but a few were on the field and having an impact entirely out of proportion to their small number.

Their leader, for that matter, had just narrowly won the race to be the first to kill one of the Oliphants. The two halves of his target smashed into the ground in opposite directions and warriors on both sides of the battle shied away from the killing intent of the man stood between the two halves of the corpse.

A moment later, Legolas skidded down the trunk of 'his' Oliphant, stepping off the end of the appendage just as the beast finally crashed to the ground. As usual, not one hair on the head of the Prince of Mirkwood was out of place.

"That was so beautiful!" cried one of Aragorn's new allies, the one with the strange, feathery eyebrows. The black-haired man clasped his hands in front of him and gazed at the elf with adoring eyes. "You're soooo graceful!"

Privately, Legolas hoped that the whole Death God thing related solely to the Gift of Men, and had nothing to do with the Halls of Mandos. Because if they could be found in the Undying Lands then he was resolved to stay as far away from Aman as possible.

"Hey, Yumi!" spat another of the warriors, this one with a shaven scalp and some sort of marking around his eyes. "Stop drooling over your new idol and start fighting, you goddamn pansy!"

"Ooh! You're just so rough at times," the swordsman replied in a whining voice before drawing his curved sword and joining his companion in cutting through a knot of orcs that tried to rush them.

Legolas was loathe to admit it, but he was beginning to miss Gimli's company in a battle. Just a little bit.


	4. Divisional Friction

There was a constant flow of black robed figures travelling between the Pelennor Fields and the Halls of Healing. Surprising most of Gondor's inhabitants, despite the similarity in garb, they did not appear to be the same as the horde of warriors that the heir to Gondor's long empty throne had brought with him to decide the battle at the gates of Minas Tirith in favour of the Race of Men.

It was true that the newly arrived contingent of Shinigami did not appear to be carrying swords, instead bearing small packs of bandages and healing ointments. However, it was not this that divided them from the hardened warriors who had preceded them, so much as their unassuming demeanours and the fact that almost without exception they seemed rather easily intimidated.

"Excuse me," a small and rather sickly looking Shinigami to a group of swordsman sprawled out on the street in front of what had once been an Inn, before the fighting in the lower levels of Minas Tirith had rampaged through it. The squad of shinigami had managed to salvage a cask of spirits from the building and declared an end to their participation in the post-battle labours.

"Whaddaya want?" snorted the apparent leader, a middle-aged fellow with a small moustache.

"We need to carry the wounded past here," Hanataro explained humbly. "Please could you move back from the road a little so that we have room to pass."

"Well we don't feel like moving for you," snorted Makizo brusquely. "So what're you going to do now, shrimp?"

There was a rumble of annoyance from the Gondorians in earshot. Two of the soldiers were reaching for their swords when there was a clatter of dwarven boots on the cobbles and two women pushed through the crowd.

One was tall and elegant, wearing a white robe over a Shinigami uniform and her long dark hair braided. The other was very small, a girl in fact, sitting on the shoulders of a red-faced dwarf, her short pink hair flying back and forth as she glanced around eagerly.

"Is there something wrong Hanataro?" the woman asked serenely of the young healer.

"Captain Unohana!" he exclaimed. "I was just asking the…" he trailed off as he saw that the Shinigami he'd been speaking to were all on their feet, dusting themselves off and concealing their various beverages.

"Uh, yes…" Makizo declared quickly. "We were just… volunteering to help move the wounded up to the… the… er…"

"Halls of Healing?" Hanataro suggested innocently.

The Eleventh Division officer scowled. "Yes. There."

"Maki-Maki!" shouted Yachiru, scrambling to stand on Gimli, one foot on the dwarf's shoulder, the other on the top of his helmet. "Take me to see the Oliphant."

"Oliphant…?" he asked hesitantly as the rest of his squad treacherously hid behind him from their Vice-Captain.

"Ken-chan promised me an Oliphant!" Yachiru said, jumping up and onto the man – an act that sent Gimli tumbling from his feet when she used him as a launch pad.


End file.
